I SUPPORT THE CONSTITUTION

by Indran Amirthanayagam

Cartoon by Ann Telnaes

I had a community read last night. Yes, a good old 

sharing of verse and opinions about the state 

of things, society, government, the neighbor laying 

a pillow outside the Martin Luther King library 

on G Street in the capital, to spend the night 

al aire libre, in the free air, on the eve of 

the 4th of July. Hey, buddy, do you want 

a dollar? How can I get you to the shelter?

Are the shelters disappearing with the ticker tape

after the Big Bloated Butchery Bill? Oh, how 

easy to go after MAGA, just twist the words 

and support the appointments of former 

insurrectionists to the Department of Injustice, 

to the Uncivil Rights Division, to the god-forsaken 

Black House. How unfortunate colors and 

their associations. Let’s change the popular 

perception. When I from black and he from 

white cloud free. Blake said it almost 

two hundred and forty years ago, 

during  the English campaign against 

slavery then. Now we see ourselves

shackled by the police state, surveilled,

our social security numbers sold to Palantir. 

This is rotten, my friends And yet we 

bring out hot dogs and coca cola today 

to feast the 249th anniversary of 

our independence. How sweet it is. 

How bitter. To say Goodbye to All That. 

To say, hello concentration camps 

in every hamlet. To say, NO. NO. NO. 

And yes I pledged my allegiance 

to the Constitution when I naturalized 

in 1988. I did not sing God Save the King.

Indran Amirthanayagam has just published El bosque de deleites fratricidas ( RIL Editores). Other recent publications include his translation of Kenia Cano’s Animal For The Eyes (Dialogos Books, 2025), Seer (Hanging Loose Press), and The Runner's Almanac (Spuyten Duyvil). He is the translator of Origami: Selected Poems of Manuel Ulacia (Dialogos Books). Mad Hat Press published his love song to Haiti: Powèt Nan Pò A (Poet of the Port). Ten Thousand Steps Against the Tyrant (BroadstoneBooks) is a collection of Indran's poems. He edits The Beltway Poetry Quarterly. He hosts the Poetry Channel on YouTube and publishes poetry books with Sara Cahill Marron at Beltway Editions.

MARKS OF WOE

by George Salamon

William Blake's "London."

In the reign of a pandemic

We turn our back on other

Calamities, close our eyes,

Barricade ourselves in safe

Spaces. Above in the ozone

Clouds simulate a scornful smile.  

George Salamon has recently contributed to The Asses of Parnassus, One Sentence Poems, Dissident Voice, and The New Verse News from St. Louis, MO.

ACHE

by Ron Riekki

Artist Frederic Remington painted “The opening of the fight at Wounded Knee” in 1891. The massacre took place on December 29, 1890.

"There have been more mass shootings than days this year: As of December 25, the 359th day of the year, there have been 406 mass shootings in the U.S., according to data from the nonprofit Gun Violence Archive (GVA), which tracks every mass shooting in the country. Twenty-nine of those shootings were mass murders." —Jason Silverstein, CBS News, December 25, 2019

“The deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history took place in 1890, when representatives of the U.S. government executed as many as 300 Native men, women, and children at Wounded Knee, South Dakota, for practicing Ghost Dancing, a spiritual tradition within our culture.” —Allen Salway, Teen Vogue, June 14, 2018

“Arise from their graves” —William Blake, “Ah! Sun-flower”

Ugh! Gun-powder!  weary of EMT
shifts, how it may look like an entrance
wound in front and an exit wound in back,

but it was really two bullets, fired behind
and in front, and bullets, now, with shitty
NRA-backed legislation are made to

ricochet around in the chest once they
enter, going from organ to organ, intro-
ducing themselves with a bloodbath,

destroying colons and lungs and spleens,
the way that colonizers smallpoxed
and large-poxed and sent poxes upon

thee—the Pawnee, the Cherokee, the
Kansa?  Have you never heard of the
Kansa?  Because extinction is erasing—

worse than erasing, de-racing, destroy-
ing the -ing of a people: their breathing,
talking, writing, hearts beating, cultures

living.  And over an Xmas dinner,
we get on guns, and I say that I wish
I could take all the gun-owners and

put them on an ambulance with me,
allow them to see what bullets do,
see bullets in merry-go-rounds and

bullets in dollhouses and bullets in
Etch A Sketches where you shake
the world and nothing changes.

Ron Riekki's most recent book is Undocumented: Great Lakes Poets Laureate on Social Justice (Michigan State University Press, 2019).

CRUELTY HAS A HUMAN HEART

by George Salamon 

Border Disorder by Jen Sorensen, TheNib, June 20, 2018

William Blake illuminated poem.

God has vanished and
Man still corrupts,
Building monuments to greed.
As he prospers, things
Die without a sigh.
Children cry, their tears
Bear witness that something
Has died without a cry.
What Phoenix can rise
Out of cold ashes
From soil planted with hate?







George Salamon lives and writes in St. Louis, MO.

THE TYGER AND THE LAMB . . . AGAIN

by Earl J Wilcox

She said: we forgive you.
He was mute.

She said: hate will not win.
He looked straight ahead.

She said: repent and find your savior.
He said” Yes, sir, to the judge.

They said: Every fiber of our being hurts.
He turned and walked out.

Today there is no balm in Gilead.


Earl J Wilcox lives in South Carolina, cooks, writes, watches baseball, contributes regularly to The New Verse News.

TO A DRONE

by Mary Cresswell

The Justice Department will publicly release a secret 2011 memo that provided the legal justification for the killing of American terrorism suspects overseas, according to a U.S. official, following extensive pressure on the administration to do so. --Karen DeYoung and Sari Horwitz, Washington Post, May 21, 2014 [Image source: World Mathaba]

Sonnenizio on a line by William Blake (‘To the evening star’)

Thou fair-hair’d angel of the evening
swooping nefarious above our lives
like some fairy tern. When we know
to pay the fare, you help us, sure –
but if we don’t, you go feral,
throwing us to the wolves, a fair cop
in some snoop’s book. The ferryman
collects our words, ferrets out
our fairweather friends and foes
and provides a fair copy to those
who think their welfare under threat.
In classic times, the Pharos did better,
keeping ships on course, sailing fair.
Spying on us is none of your affair.


Mary Cresswell is from Los Angeles and lives on New Zealand’s Kapiti Coast. Canterbury University Press will publish her fourth book, Fish Stories, next year.